Obliquity and Precession in the Quaternary: Analyzing Climate Responses Using Single-Forcing GCM Simulations and Bayesian Model-Proxy Comparison

Abstract:

We present a detection and attribution approach to interpret the forcings and feedbacks that shaped Quaternary climate stemming from known variations in Earth’s obliquity, precession, greenhouse gases, and ice sheet extent. Because future climate changes will be driven largely by only one forcing, CO₂, it is important to better separate and understand the individual contributions of different forcings in producing past recorded changes. We use idealized equilibrium GCM simulations to fingerprint the annual mean and seasonal responses to individual changes in obliquity, precession, CO₂, and ice sheets. These idealized “fingerprint” simulations are scaled by time series of past forcings and summed together to create a time-varying linear reconstruction of past climate that can be compared against proxy records. A multiple linear regression is conducted using Bayesian inference between the components of the linear reconstruction and long proxy time series, such as temperature from deuterium in Antarctic ice cores, to determine whether the modeled response to each forcing needs to be stronger or weaker to better match the data. This methodology offers a simple framework for exploring uncertainties affecting the interpretation of long time series of Quaternary climate variability and a way to use proxy data to test climate response processes relevant to future climate change.